


Clothes

by princessbekker



Series: Family!Verse [5]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: D slur, Gen, Nick uses the d slur but it's made clear he's not supposed to, back to school shopping, implied body dysphoria, lesbian olivia, this is gonna be an ongoing thing, uhh basically this is set up for Zara trying to figure herself out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 23:06:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessbekker/pseuds/princessbekker





	Clothes

One of the first things Zara notices, after moving in with her father, is that he and Sonny are exactly the kind of gay people her mother would hate. Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe Nick is why she feels that way, but either way,  Zara knows her mother would hate what they’re like. Nick has tee shirts with rainbows on them he likes to wear out. They go to pride events. Sonny’s jacket has various LGBT patches on it. They tease each other by calling each other gay whenever they do something romantic. Really, the thing that Maria would have hated the most, is that they’re happy and open about it. 

She’s been there almost six months before she goes back to school shopping, to get more clothes than the few pairs of jean shorts and light tee shirts. In the meanwhile, she’s gotten to go to pride, and has acquired a lesbian shirt, but she has this feeling of not quite right. This itch beneath her skin. It’s always been there, but having the opportunity to do something about it is entirely different.

Olivia and Nick are with Zara, in the huge department store with an entire floor for clothing. Although she’s not supposed to, she looks at the tags of things to find out how much she should buy. Nick always says not to worry about the cost, but she always will. By taking a look at the tags, she knows this is a cheaper place, which means she can get more without having to spend too much.

They go to the women’s section first and foremost, which makes sense. She’s a woman- a young one, maybe not quite over the threshold. Zara goes to a stack of jeans and starts thumbing through them for a size that might fit her while Olivia starts on a rack of tee shirts like the ones Zara already owns. Nick doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself; mostly he looks around at thing. He picks up a tee shirt with a Bulbasaur on it in a size clearly too large for Zara, but not broad enough in the shoulders for himself. It must be for Sonny. 

Zara holds up one of the pairs of jeans and wrinkles her nose. They’ll fit, but they’re skinny jeans, despite being labeled as normal. All jeans in the women’s department are skinny jeans, she’s noticed. In the past she would’ve bought them anyways, but she’s so tired of pretending to be something she’s not.

“Want something looser?” Olivia asks, startling Zara almost enough for her to drop the jeans. “I’ve been buying jeans from the men’s department since I was your age. They’re not as fitted.”

Her first instinct is to say no. A second later, she realizes that Nick and Olivia probably don’t give a shit if she buys things from the men’s section. Slowly, Zara nods, and follows Olivia across the center aisle of the store to the men’s section, where a whole wall of different styles and washes and colors of jeans stand. 

The first thing Zara notices when she touches the jeans is that it’s like a different fabric entirely. This is actual denim. It’s rougher. Thicker. And Nick has to point out to her that the sizes are just measurements of her body, not arbitrary zeros, twos, up to sixteens before this store decides it isn’t worth it. Here, they start in the upper twenties, because that’s the actual size. 

“We’ll help you find something that fits,” Olivia says. “What style do you want? I personally like , and Alex likes men’s slims because they’ve still got more room than women’s.”

After a quick look at the pictures next to the jeans display, she chooses straight leg, and lets Olivia help her find a few sizes to try on to figure out what fits best, because Zara doesn’t exactly know her measurements off the top of her head. The pairs go into a cart Nick got at some point, and Zara’s prepared to go back to the other section when her eyes land on a button down. It’s navy, with little white sharks all over it. Nick sees her looking and goes over to them. “What size are you?”

“That’s a guy’s shirt.”

Nick blinks.”Do you like the shirt?”

“I mean, I think it looks pretty cool.”

“Then it doesn’t matter what the store categorizes it as. I don’t care what section you get your clothes from, as long as you like them. Now, what size are you?”

Zara’s a women’s medium, so she has to go over to the rack and hold things up to her body until she figures out what men’s size she is. It turns out to be small. She puts it in the cart too, and then starts looking around the men’s section. Surprisingly, she likes more of these things than she thought she would. A few more button downs go into the cart, alongside several tee shirts, a jacket, and a snapback. 

When she starts trying things on, something clicks. She looks at herself in the mirror. The second pair of jeans she’s put on fit perfect and comfortable. Her shark button down falls mostly flat because Zara doesn’t have a real bra here yet, just a couple cheap sports bras (which means she should probably get real bras while they’re at the store), and her chest hasn’t ever been particularly big. There’s a slight strain to the buttons over her chest, but she feels like it’s not too noticeable. On a whim, she picks up the hat and tucks her hair into it so it doesn’t fall around her shoulders.

It clicks.

She still looks like a girl, but she also doesn’t. This feels right. The difference from how she usually dresses, especially the way she used to back in California, it’s giving her a feeling of comfort in her chest that she doesn’t know how to describe. Zara’s about to open the dressing room door to get Olivia and Nick’s opinion, but pauses first to rip the hat off of her head. It may be comfortable, it may make her look more like herself than she possibly ever has, but the fact remains that she’s lived her entire life in a world where love is entirely conditional. She doesn’t want to find out if that’s the case here too.

“Does this look okay?”

“It looks amazing. The only thing it’s missing is-”

“Don’t say dyke boots,” Nick interrupts. Olivia hits his arm. “You’re right, sorry. I won’t do it again. But no, she doesn’t need those.” He looks up at Zara with his head tilted to the side slightly. “Unless you want them. If you want stompy boots- is that what Noah calls them? Your stompy boots? Anyways, if you want a pair, you can have one.”

Zara’s eyes fall down to where Olivia’s tapping her boots against the industrial floor. They have thick soles and steel toes, and are affectionately referred to by Olivia and Alex as her dyke boots. Why, Zara isn’t entirely sure. But she does like them, and has spent a fair bit of time admiring them when no one’s looking. She doesn’t like it when people look at her. Even the amount Nick and Olivia are right now is starting to make her skin itch.

“If they’re not too expensive, a pair of boots like Olivia’s would be cool.”

Nick waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about cost. We’ll get you a pair, okay? Now, go try on the rest of it, see what else you like.”


End file.
